Sister Chapman
Sister Chapman is a Southern California-based artist who investigates notions of self as subject/object. Drawing from personal and cultural archives, her practice contemplates intimacy, desire, and relations of power through writing and film making. The camera doesn’t care about your desire (2020) is a video piece that reframes the infamous genital reveal in the 1992 film Basic Instinct through a transfeminine lens. By simultaneously occupying the role of object of desire and subverting the genital reveal through the use of a mirror, the artist acknowledges the desire for transfeminine bodies while refusing to indulge the viewer’s curiosity, even mocking it.
Roots growing in the pipes
Twisting around my legs in the bathtub
Smooth like intestines
Submerged
Let me be your hydroponic lover
There is mold on the tiles
Turn on the shower and watch yourself disappear in the mirror
Become entangled with me, lying here in the damp darkness
Watching the lone daffodil slowly wilt on my vanity
Will it be dead before I see you again?
The yellow becomes darker, deeper each day
Once translucent, a fragile tint
Drooping petals like the fresh, wet wings of a butterfly emerging from her chrysalis
You smell clean, but the odor doesn’t linger
I wish I could smell you on my sheets
In my hair
My bed has never felt empty before
